San Diego Go Club President Ted Terpstra has been seeing go everywhere lately. On senet, an Egyptian board game that’s older than go by 3,000 years, but lost for millennia before being reborn, “‘GO’ can be seen in a couple of places on the side of the board,” he writes. A recent New Yorker cover “that at first glance seemed to have many white go stones scattered in it,” turned out to be raindrops on a taxi window as it approaches the Empire State Building, which Terpstra points out “is near the 2014 Go Congress site.” The UCSD Go Club combined with the San Diego Go Club to sponsor Go Night at UCSD on Saturday, November 8. Japanese language students turned out to learn go at a Study Abroad event. Twenty student showed up for the beginners class and although it was supposed to end at 8:30 p.m., “the students kept playing until they were thrown out at 10 p.m.,” says Terpstra.

South Africa beat Ireland 3-1 in their Pandanet European Team Championship match last night. The victorious team was Andrew Davies Andre Connell Chris Welsh Lloyd Rubidge More details, including game records, are available here

The Internet is filled with cats, so Steve Colburn wasn’t too surprised to come across this piece by Tango that combines cats and go. “The tumblr this came off of has a lot of fun images for simple perspective and jokes,” Colburn adds.

Daniel Chou 6D (below, left) took top honors 3-0 at the UMBC tourney last Sunday. “Some 34 players turned out to enjoy a day of go, friendship, and free pizza,” reports Gurujeet Khalsa. Hosted by the UMBC club there was also a strong showing from neighboring AGA collegiate clubs from Johns Hopkins University and the University of MD, College Park. Other 3-0 winners were: Zhangqi Luo (2D), Julian Erville (1D), Kasidet Hiranniramoi (5K), Brendan Berger (5K) and Hyungwook Lee (13K).photos: (left) UMBC Club President Nathan Epstein congratulates Daniel Chou; (right) playing scene at the Skylight room UMBC Commons. Photos by Gurujeet Khalsa, TD

Just a few days left to sign up for the Young Lions Tournament, players must register by Wednesday Nov. 19th. The matches will take place on November 22 and 23 in the AGHS Tournaments Room on KGS. The first round will begin at 1 pm EST, and the second round at 4 pm EST. The second day will follow the same schedule. “This tournament is one of the biggest youth go events in America,” says AGHS Promotion Head Amy Su, “young go players will fight tooth and claw to emerge on top, will you be the one to lead the pride this year?” Anyone 18 or under may participate, and there will be prizes for the winners in multiple categories. Visit the official Young Lions website for more information, to register fill out this form. -Paul Barchilon, E-J Youth Editor

Watch your local team play this Sunday in the AGA City League. Games start at 3PM EST Sunday. Make sure to check out the latest GoPanda2 client as well; it has been updated recently and has new features.

Learn How to Run a Tournament: Steve Colburn is well-known as a key member of the E-Journal’s Congress team and as the AGA’s sysadmin extraordinaire, but he’s also the chapter head of the Empty Sky Go Club in Rochester, NY. Colburn has now released a few videos on how to administer an AGA chapter, including how to run a tournament with OpenGotha, and how to update a chapter’s details with the AGA Membership Manager. Click here for his videos. Questions about how to update your information, sign up, or use the AGA website? Send them to operations@usgo.org and we’ll make more tutorial videos with your questions.

Cotsen’s New Facebook Page: The Cotsen Open has a new Facebook page. “Like” it and you’ll be the first to hear announcements when the 2015 Cotsen is scheduled as well as updates throughout the year.

Using Go to Study Culture: Bret Beheim, a Post Doctoral Fellow in the Anthropology Department at the University of New Mexico proposes go as “a model system in the study of cultural evolution” in “Strategic Social Learning and Evolutionary Arms Races in the Game of Go,” a Nov. 20, 2012 presentation of a paper he co-authored with Calvin Thigpen and Richard McElreath. The paper, drawing from “a large archive of Go games spanning the last six decades of professional play,” finds “evidence that changes in the frequencies of particular cultural variants are driven by social learning mechanisms such as frequency-dependence and success bias.”

EJ Copy Editor Wanted: With an increasing number of go news reports from around the world, the E-Journal has an opening for a volunteer copy editor. If interested, email journal@usgo.org

November 26 Deadline for Australian Go Congress Early Bird Rate: There’s limited space for international competitors at the first-ever Australian Go Congress, set for January 25-31, 2015 in Sydney (First Australian Go Congress set for 2015 in Sydney 7/13/2014 EJ).There’s an early bird rate for those who book and pay prior to November 26.

Strong Player Boosts Evanston Go Club: After many months of low attendance, things are picking up at the Evanston Go Club, reports organizer Mark Rubenstein. “We are fortunate to have attracted Bill Lin 7 dan to the club recently, and his presence has been a boost to attendance and interest. If you live in the area and have not been to the club in a while, now is a very good time to learn from the best!” photo courtesy Mark Rubenstein

Kiseido Releases Vol.3 of Road Map to Shodan: Kiseido has just released The Road Map to Shodan, Volume Three; The Basics of Life and Death by Rob van Zeijst and Richard Bozulich. The third volume of The Road Map to Shodan is a thorough introduction to the topic of life and death. It can be read by players who have just learned the rules, but it is also useful for players up to 1-dan or for any amateur player who needs to review the basics of life and death. Kiseido is also having a special 40% off clearance sale of Hyuga kaya table go boards.

Kaz’ Special Offer: “Buy 10, get 1 free plus more stuff”: Longtime EJ contributor Kazunari Furuyama is running a special teaching offer through December 23 for his Offline Lessons. Prepay for 10 lessons and you’ll get an 11th lesson free, plus you will receive 30 problems per lesson, as opposed to 25 when paying on a lesson-by-lesson basis. You’ll also receive five extra mini-lessons on countering various openings and he will give you another five extra mini-lessons on various themes of your choice.

SmartGo Kifu and the upgrade package are on sale for one week. For the next week, the go apps’ upgrade bundle will be $16 — if you bought Pro at $13, you can upgrade for just $3. And SmartGo Kifu(right) will be on sale for $15 (25% off). “Grab this chance before it’s gone,” says SmartGo author Anders Kierulf. “This is a rare opportunity, as SmartGo Kifu has only ever been on sale once before in its 4.5 years.” Kierulf revived the iPhone-only SmartGo Pro earlier this year to get users up-to-date, “and as soon as Apple allowed it, I added an upgrade package to give users a way to upgrade from Pro to Kifu. However, the numbers are in, and having multiple versions of essentially the same app is proving to be too confusing.” After next week, Kierulf will remove SmartGo Pro from the App Store; “SmartGo Kifu, which works on both iPad and iPhone, is the way forward,” he says. Read more about it here.

So last week the BIBA students went to watch the semi-finals of the Samsung Cup being played in Korea. It was a lot of fun and the students, including myself, got to study with the national Korean baduk team. These players are the top young professional players here in Korea, and we were able to make new friends and learn new strategies with them. Check out this photo of the national team, BIBA students and Kim Ji-Seok who joined in the review after finishing his game. We also had a lot of fun playing Ping Pong and Choku (Foot-VollyBall) with our teachers and other professional players.

It was definitely an amazing experience to be able to study with young Korean professionals and play some sports with them. It was also exciting to see the Samsung Cup semi-finals being played and explained to you by half a dozen other pros. I think the funniest thing I heard was when I asked who was winning in a certain game, and a pro friend of mine said “White, by a lot.” When I asked how much exactly she paused and replied, “3 or 4 points.” Once again goes to show how every point matters to a professional player when an amateur likely loses at least that many points in the endgame alone.

Anyway, it was a fun trip and all the students enjoyed it. To see more pictures and follow BIBA activity, you can like their page on Facebook.

Go Game Guru has bought Hinoki Press from founder Chris Greene, who started the go book publishing company in 2006 and has since published 18 go books. A long-time go player, Greene started Hinoki after retiring from his career as a programmer “because he wanted to give something back to the go community,” says GGG’s David Ormerod. “Chris’ contribution to the body of English-language go books is immense… Hinoki’s efforts made a lot of thought provoking material available in English for the first time.”

Because of his health, Greene no longer wants to continue running Hinoki. “It’s important to all of us that go books stay in print wherever possible and we bought Hinoki with the express purpose of keeping all 18 of its books in print,” says Ormerod. “We’ll continue to sell these books under the Hinoki brand name for the time being and will gradually build on Chris’ work with our own books – starting with our upcoming Lee Sedol vs Gu Li Jubango book.” For go players, Ormerod says “this also means that we’ll be able to provide you with go books at even better prices than before.”

After a several-year hiatus the UMBC Fall tournament returns this Sunday, sponsored by the University of Maryland Baltimore County Go Club. Registration starts at 10 AM on Sunday 11/16. There will be three rounds in sections of eight players. Free pizza and cash prizes. The tournament will be in the Skylight room at the top of the Commons building on the UMBC campus, 1000 Hilltop Circle, Catonsville,MD. Free to UMBC students and faculty. Pre-register with Tournament Director, Gurujeet Khalsa, by email at gurujeet@live.com or RSVP on the Meetup event or call 703-626-0777.